Zarban

What are the factions in your campaign, and what do they want? Dungeon Dudes put out a nice video with advice about how to structure and use factions in your fantasy role-playing game campaign. They recommend having five factions, which I think is too many for both the GM and the players to keep track of. Three is better, with one being a distant background force (like machinations leading to open war) and the other two being those the heroes encounter regularly.

One of the keys to making factions fun is to present at least some of them as more or less equal alternatives to the players, rather than as good or evil. I explained this more in my Sandbox to Saga post. I also covered ways to structure and present factions and politics in general in my Add Politics to D&D post.

Each faction should have a goal, an asset, and a weakness. They will tend to hide their weaknesses while seeking assets to mitigate them. Meanwhile, they will tend to use their existing assets to achieve their goal.

Introducing Factions

Information should be doled out in pieces, first by the DM and then by sages, healers, officials, and nobles. But none should be a lore dump. Each should be just enough for the players to get the idea, and details follow later in bite-sized bits over two or three adventures.

Example: The Knights of Lichmar

• DM: [Points to map.] This is the land of Grotal, ruled by the wicked King Haeifus, who employs hobgoblins to harass the borderlands of fair Vianil
• Sage: This is the symbol of the Knights of Lichmar, the personal order of Haeifus. They are the darkest order of knighthood–unchivalrous knaves. If you met them in Vianil, they must be probing the border.
• Priest: Haeifus is less a king than a tyrant. The peasants there are all serfs under his black thumb. The only way to a better life is to join his army and prove yourself in battle to become one of his knights.
• Sheriff: The earl is mustering an army here and in his other cities. The news in the borderlands is that an army masses in Grotal, led by the Knights of Lichmar. They may drive hobgoblins before them to soften up our soldiers.
• Lord: The Knights of Lichmar are said to have set up a camp on the Vianil side of the border. They may have footmen and crossbowmen–perhaps even hobgoblin lackeys. Can you find it and scatter them?

Of course, depending on what the players choose to do, they may battle the knights directly on their own or be asked to infiltrate Grotal and spy on goings on there. Or they may assault the headquarters of the Knights of Lichmar and decapitate the organization.

And, of course, the players may not react to the Knights of Lichmar hook and instead take umbrage at being cheated by the Shadow Guild of Antolin City and take the fight to them instead.

Advancing Faction Agendas

Some goals are win/lose, but for certain types of factions or their goals, you can count down to their plan coming to fruition. This should be for process-type plans whose steps are public knowledge (or secret but can be uncovered) and that ultimately can affect the heroes or people the heroes support.

Between adventures, roll a d6 or two. If you roll two dice, it’s possible for a faction to advance two steps.

1d6	Event
1	Faction 1 makes progress
2	Faction 2 makes progress
3	Faction 3 makes progress
4	News (a noble died [resurrected?], monarch issued edict, local leadership changed)
5	Very minor news (iron ore discovered, pigs got loose in the city, griffon sighted)
6	Very minor news (merchant caravan arrived, building caught fire, local NPC died)

If you like, you can track this on a progress clock.

Example: The Qualiquat

The underhanded Qualiquat wants to replace the Earl of Gunchester with one of their own: his cousin, the evil Lord Howl de Gracey. For this to be meaningful, the heroes must like the earl and his son, the rightful heir.

• The faction helps Lord Howl win fame by capturing a great treasure (one the heroes knew about and perhaps were interested in pursuing soon).
• The faction helps Lord Howl win glory by defeating a powerful monster. He makes disparaging remarks about the earl’s son.
• The faction uses some underhanded trick to make Gunchester’s son look bad.
• The faction attempts to assassinate Gunchester while his son is out of public favor, whereupon Lord Howl will make a claim to the crown, raising army, if necessary.

Any investigation into Howl or the Qualiquat could uncover letters revealing a step in the plan or hinting at the end game. If the plan gets to the assassination stage, you might have the heroes uncover it, so they can try to stop it. Depending on their actions, they might succeed in killing the Qualiquat’s leader only to learn the assassination succeeded, leading to a war of succession with a different rival.

Fleshing Out Factions

You’ll need to flesh out your factions with some information about their leaders (perhaps the three NPCs at the top), their minions (whom the heroes will encounter here and there), and their goals.

A fun thing to do is to make factions that oppose each other or whose goals are mutually exclusive. Then your die-rolling can determine which succeeds first, and it’s as much as surprise to you as to the players.